It was becoming ever easier to know when a decision was mine and when it was Martin’s. For starters, I was never surprised by my own decisions – well, hardly ever, anyway. The majority of events that bore the stamp of Martin’s influence were totally unexpected, completely counter to my usual way of thinking.

At the start of our relationship, if that’s what you can call it, Martin had said to me, “I shall be your motivator. Every choice you make, every decision you face, will be my choice, my decision. You won’t know that, but it will be so.” I should have known that what he said wasn’t likely to be strictly true. Not for nothing did he go down in history as Martinus mendax – Martin is a liar. He didn’t make every decision for me, only those where he thought he could have some fun, do some mischief, or further his or the horde’s agenda. Frustratingly, I could never contact him, ask him to intervene or even know in advance when he planned to step in and decide things for me. This was a one-way transaction, and although I had no choice but to accept it, it still rankled.

Possession is a strange beast. As he has done with me, with my personality and psyche, Martin’s control by the horde, while absolute, was not total; not to the exclusion of his self, that which made Martin the mason who he was; the product of his genetic heritage, his upbringing and his life’s experiences. Those aspects of him may have been subjugated, but they were not totally overwhelmed. Some part remained. In the same way, Martin’s mastery of me was absolute, but not total. In fact it was probably less complete than the horde’s influence over him.

The result of this, was that I couldn’t get a handle on who Martin really was. That he was a capable mason, working on a shrine that was being built as part of the religious complex at Rocamadour in France, nine hundred years ago was a fact of history. So, too, was his list of wrongdoings; offences for which he was incarcerated, by some manner of sorcery, inside the statue from which he escaped and infested me. However, whether he or his masters; I had no way of distinguishing between the two; the result was not totally, completely evil.

I had lived with the daily fit of barking from Gina’s terriers for some years, as had Jim. Neither of us had ever thought about doing anything other than putting up with it and moaning quietly to ourselves. The decision to get involved didn’t surprise me, I was learning to expect that, but the nature of the intervention turned upside-down everything I thought I knew about Martin. I anticipated no more than to be a spectator at the horrific demise of the two dogs, and had visions of spending a lot of time comforting and consoling Gina afterwards. I certainly didn’t foresee Martin using me to desensitise the dogs and leave them, and their owner, more calm, balanced and tranquil. I can only assume that was the work of the real Martin, the humble, hard-working and highly skilled stone-mason, not of the evil horde.

Things remained quiet for some weeks after that. Gina and I became friends as well as neighbours and, although I never liked the idea of living in another’s pockets, I was more than happy to spend some time with her. Gina was a kind soul, a widow of some years’ standing who lived alone, save for her dogs. Her life, she told me, had become more pleasant, more relaxed since I, or rather since Martin had worked with them, and she was embarrassingly effusive in her gratitude. Whether the decision to offer for her to accompany me on the trip to Rocamadour I was planning was mine or Martin’s, I couldn’t tell. Was the decision to continue to befriend Gina after the episode with her dogs mine or Martin’s? I was, honestly, unsure. It had always been my nature to be friendly, to help people when I could, and to enjoy cordial relationships with my neighbours, but I always kept a certain distance, a certain – some called it aloofness, although I was never happy with that charge. Gina was different. I held no romantic aspirations, but was actively pursuing a friendship deeper than any I’d known with a woman in a long time. Perhaps, and this was a most interesting possibility; perhaps Martin was using her to deal with nine hundred years of enforced solitude. Perhaps he was lonely, and craving female company.

Perhaps, I dared to think, nothing bad would befall Gina as a result of this…

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